Sunday and later I have to head for the Quarter for a panel, a reading and the closing reception. I am so glad I took tomorrow off! Just thinking about the day ahead makes me tired. I was very tired yesterday but ran some errands, including picking up my copy of Enemy of My Enemy, the new Daredevil novel from the always delightful Alex Segura and making some groceries. I tried to be productive yesterday but fell into a vortex of laziness and rest that carried me through the day until I went to bed last night. I didn’t want to get up this morning, either, and Sparky was very insistent. I don’t have a lot of time this morning before I have to get ready and summon a Lyft to the Quarter. I don’t resent the wasted time yesterday–I did watch some of the figure skating–but will definitely have to recover while being productive tomorrow.
I am very glad I took tomorrow off.
I did start watching Inside the Manosphere yesterday, and didn’t last very long before I was nauseated and disgusted and had to turn it off, and I don’t even think I lasted a full ten minutes. We do very much live in the time of the grift, do we not? It seems like everywhere we turn, there’s a grifter trying to con people out of their money. I would say we are heading for a grift economy, if we aren’t already in one. The Fed said the Treasury is insolvent this past week, which is nothing new; the Treasury has been insolvent for decades now, no one has bothered to make it known. I know this is a conservative point, but the national debt isn’t a credit card where we can keep raising the limit every year. This means the truth is the world economy is really just smoke and mirrors; the United States cannot pay its debt but calling the loans and a default would collapse the world economy, so the credit ceiling keeps being raised, kicking the can and a world-wide economic collapse down the road so someone else can deal with it. (This was the thinking of the French Bourbons in the 1780s, and how did that work out for them?) I don’t have a problem with cutting federal spending, but cutting it from things that do not benefit the American people. Funny how that is always the first thing that needs to be cut, not the billions of dollars pumped into our military and into other countries as bribes to be our allies.
I don’t think there’s much benefit to being an American ally these days, is there? What do Qatar and the UAE and the Saudis and Kuwait think about that now? And of course we can’t even be certain that the news we are getting about this stupid new war is actually true, now that our mainstream media has become so deeply corrupted and untrustworthy. I’ll never trust CBS, CNN, or any of the big papers ever again. I suppose this regime has done the country a favor by showing how hollow and false and misplaced our trust has been in the institutions that supposedly make our democracy stronger. And once you see the pattern of American exceptionalism in the way we are taught to view our history and that of the rest of the world, the institutions crumble beneath the weight of the lies they’ve been telling us for years. Once you see it and the scales from your eyes are gone, you can’t unsee it, and you question everything you know.
One of the things about this decade and what I’ve been through on top of everything else we collectively have been through has been being forced to stop and slow down and think about everything. Having COVID in the summer of 2022 physically forced me not to check or answer emails or take phone calls or write or do anything other than watch television, and think. That illness and enforced rest made me realize I wasn’t very happy and I wasn’t enjoying my life anymore (or my authorial career) and that it was time to start making some changes…and after that initial illness, there were so many other times I was forced to take time off–surgeries and recoveries, etc.–and I was able to start examining myself and who I am and why I am the way I am, and to decide that ultimately the only person besides Paul that I am responsible for is me, and I am the only person who can make my life better and more peaceful. I started sorting things out for myself and dealing with my own issues, figuring out a lot of things I never took the time to do before, primarily because I didn’t want to examine any of this–and I think that I stayed so super-busy so I would never have time to think and process because my down time was spent resting because I was exhausted. I didn’t do a lot of chores or reading or writing yesterday mainly because I wanted to free up my brain to rest and think clearly and prepare. I’ve made peace with a lot of things over these past few years, and my mental health and my peace of mind is the most important thing in my life going forward.
And on that note, I am going to get ready to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday, everyone, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning.
Queer and Loathing in America 